How will events in Ukraine ripple through Ontario’s economy and politics?

In an odd way, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the photo negative of the pandemic: while COVID-19, as a public-health emergency, was always going to see most of the important public policy happen at the provincial level, the war in Eastern Europe — and the primary role of diplomacy and military policy — has put the federal government front and centre. It will be decisions made around Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet table or in the House of Commons, not decisions made by Premier Doug Ford or Queen’s Park, that largely decide events. But reality doesn’t obey the neat lines drawn by the Constitution, and the place called “Ontario” is still entirely inside the place called “Canada,” so the literal shockwaves from blasts in Ukraine will have figurative ripples here.

On the matter of the humanitarian tragedy, Ontario will need to house the refugees who will arrive here in as-yet-unknown numbers: just literally housing them will be a challenge on its own, given this province’s existing housing shortage. As the still only weeks-old war has already expelled more than 2 million people from Ukraine into other countries, mostly Poland, the idea of Canada receiving tens of thousands of refugees is something both the federal government and Ontario will need to plan around. Canada has received more than 70,000 Syrian refugees in the years since 2015. A similar influx of Ukrainians might be easier to manage for one reason: there’s already a very large (and politically active) Ukrainian-Canadian community here to welcome new arrivals. However many arrive here, they will need all the services that government provides, including health care and education, and we’ll need to figure out how to accommodate that at least over the medium term.

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But the effects of the war are not going to be limited to the flow of desperate people out of the region. Probably the most immediate and visible effect: the cost of oil and gasoline, which has been driven even higher than it already was. We don’t need to dwell on this too much. Suffice it to say that governments are keenly attuned to the price of gasoline because it has a direct impact on whether they get re-elected. The Doug Ford government has already taken one step to address the high cost of driving, by  removing license-plate sticker fees. It won’t be shocking if it tries to do something more in the coming spring budget.

There have been many oil shocks since the early 1970s, but it’s notable that this one is occurring at precisely the moment where we’re seeing a surge of investment in alternatives to oil and gas for both transportation (electric vehicles) and home heating (with electric heat pumps). Europe — which is more directly tied to Russia’s oil exports than is North America— is already scrambling to reduce its dependence on Russian hydrocarbons; in Ontario, the impulse is going to be more about protecting consumers from high prices. But we shouldn’t discount the possibility that policies from Europe will spread beyond their specific context: if countries like France and Germany make a concerted push to wean consumers off oil and gas where they aren’t strictly necessary, that will provide a model that other governments may eventually choose to follow. 

But Russia doesn’t export just oil and gas; it’s a major source of any number of raw materials that global markets will now be looking for alternative sources of. The prices of everything from wheat to nickel are going through the roof right now, and while that’s bad news for consumers, it could also spur investments in northern Ontario, where companies have been trying to sell visions of new mineral development to help feed global lithium-battery demand. The Ring of Fire, a major nickel and chromium deposit in Ontario’s northwest, has been languishing under both Liberal and PC governments for more than a decade now. It’s a fiendishly complicated file involving questions of northern infrastructure and Indigenous rights, but moments like the current crisis also have a history of sweeping away complexity if governments decide the need for (in this case) new resources is urgent enough.

One area it’s difficult to see the war against Ukraine affecting: the coming election campaign. The support for Ukraine’s side in the war has been so unanimous among the major parties at the legislature that it’s difficult to imagine it being the kind of issue that will divide voters. Instead, we’ll be reacting to the second-order effects of the conflict in the weeks, and months, and possibly even years to come.